Automation is used in pharmacies to generate operational efficiency for the process of filling prescriptions. Exemplary automated pharmacy machines are described and illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 5,337,919 to Spaulding et al., U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,006,946; 6,036,812; 6,176,392 and 6,971,541 to Williams et al., U.S. Pat. No. 8,016,095 to Daniels, U.S. Pat. No. 7,596,932 to Sink, and U.S. Patent Publication Nos. 2008/0110921; 2008/0110555; and 2008/0283179, the disclosure of each of which is hereby incorporated herein in its entirety.
To make a pharmacy as efficient as possible, an automation system must incorporate the appropriate mix of drugs that generate the greatest amount of prescriptions processed through the automation with limited “touch time.” Often, at installation of automated equipment, the correct mix of NDCs within the automated machine is determined by a snapshot of the pharmacy's recent prescription drug dispensing history. With some equipment, although individual drug dispensing cells (or bins) are configurable onsite, pre-calibration of the dispensing cells occurs prior to installation based on the information supplied in the snapshot discussed above.
As time goes on, it is common in the pharmacy business to see frequent changes to a pharmacy's NDC mix. This is the result of, inter alia, new drugs released to market, new generic releases, and alternate manufacturers of existing drugs (for example, in 2011 there were 800 new unique drug products released (identified by National Drug Code (NDC) in the US or Drug Identification Number (DIN) in Canada), including brand to generic and entirely new generic drugs). Seasonal changes may also result in changes to the particular drugs most frequently dispensed by the pharmacy (e.g., allergy medications in the spring and summer months versus cold and flu medications, as well as antibiotics, during the fall and winter months). Due to the frequency of changes in NDCs, the efficiency resulting from the specific mix of NDCs originally established in the automation may deteriorate over time. For example, 50% automation throughput (as a percentage of total pharmacy volume) can drop to 30% or less over time if the NDC mix housed in the automation system never changes.
A pharmacy's ability to maintain automation optimization is difficult in the current environment. It ordinarily requires querying of the pharmacy's pharmacy management system of all prescriptions filled over a given duration (typically 90 days). The pharmacy also typically must run a report from the automation to provide a dispensing history that is specific to automated processing. The staff must then manually study the results to look for slow moving NDCs in automation and replace them with fast moving NDCs that are able to be filled through automation. Additionally, without even more complex calculations, the pharmacy will not know its current run rate (% of scripts through automation) vs. future run rate (% scripts through automation after changes) to know if the updates will have a significant or nominal impact on performance. Due to the complexity of this process of optimizing automation, most pharmacies will only perform these tasks 1-2 times per year at best, so its efficiency gains are not being maximized. It may be desirable to provide methods and systems that assist pharmacies in improving the efficiency level of their automation.